■ China
Japan sends experts
Tokyo has sent experts to investigate drums of poison gas thought to have been left by the Japanese army after World War II that sickened dozens of people in China's northeast last week, a Japanese official said yesterday. Two people were "close to death" with breathing problems after exposure to the gas in the city of Qiqihar, the state newspaper China Daily said. It said 32 others were hospitalized, including one man with chemical burns on 95 percent of his body. The poison, believed to be mustard gas, was released Aug. 4 after construction workers unearthed the five drums at a building site.
■ Australia
Governor-general sworn in
Queen Elizabeth's new representative in Australia was sworn in yesterday, three months after her previous envoy was forced to resign in the wake of two sex scandals. Major-General Michael Jeffery, a decorated Vietnam War hero, was appointed Australia's 24th governor-general in a formal ceremony at the national parliament. Jeffery replaces Peter Hollingworth, a former Anglican archbishop, who left the job amid public anger over his protection of a pedophile priest in the 1990s and over a 40-year-old, unproven rape case that was eventually dismissed.
■ Japan
Abudction issue to be raised
Japan plans to raise the abduction of its citizens by North Korea at six-way talks to be held late this month in Beijing on the crisis over Pyongyang's nuclear ambitions, a Japanese official said yesterday. But the official said the issue of the abductions, which took place decades ago but have dogged relations between Japan and the reclusive communist state, would be resolved bilaterally. "This is an important issue so this will be raised," the official quoted Japanese chief Cabinet secretary Yasuo Fukuda as saying at the end of a three-day visit to Beijing. North Korea has admitted kidnapping 13 Japanese citizens in the 1970s and 1980s to help train spies, saying eight of them subsequently died.
■ Australia
Penis enlargement blasted
Men who want their penises surgically enlarged are showing signs of profound psychological disturbance as well as risking infection, the president of the Australian Society of Plastic Surgery said yesterday. Dr Alfred Lewis said that the same could not be said of women seeking breast enlargement. "Breasts are public organs and the penis isn't -- it's a private organ," he told reporters at an international plastic surgery conference in Sydney. Lewis said he would personally never perform a penis enlargement. "It's a completely and absolutely unnecessary operation which I think, in the patient requesting it, is showing a fairly profound psychological disturbance," he said.
■ Pakistan
Man kills relatives
A man sneaked into his brother's home and shot to death his sister-in-law and his four teenage nieces, apparently because he believed two of the nieces had disgraced the family's honor by having affairs, police said yesterday. The man, Shaukat Ahmed, shot each of the women in the head at close range Sunday, said police spokesperson Mirza Liaqat Ali. The brother was away from home at the time of the attack, which took place in Muridke, 30km north of Lahore. Only the eldest niece, 18-year-old Misbah, made it to a hospital, where she died during emergency care.
■ Venezuela
Mother strongly sacrificial
Venezuelan mother Jenny Navarro has sold off her television and video player to keep her family afloat -- now she is offering to sell one of her kidneys for US$150,000 to pay for her children's education. "I'm willing to do whatever I can for my kids," said Navarro, an unemployed systems technician who shares a room with her three children in a poor neighborhood in eastern Caracas and is struggling to survive the recession battering her country. "It's getting desperate. They are not going to miss their education because of me," she said in an interview. Venezuela, the world's No. 5 oil exporter, is caught in the worst economic downturn in its history amid political conflict over the rule of leftist President Hugo Chavez.
■ Colombia
Truck bomb wounds 17
A truck bomb exploded near a radio station in central Colombia on Sunday, wounding at least 17 people, police said. Authorities blamed rebels of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, for the attack in the town of San Martin, near the city of Villavicencio in Meta state. Jose Arnulfo, the police commander in Meta state, told Canal Uno Television that between 17 and 20 people were wounded in the blast, which severely damaged Super Radio, a gas station and several houses. Authorities offered 20 million pesos (about US$7,000) for information leading to the arrest of those responsible.
■ France
Farmer's leader steps down
France's best-known farmer, Jose Bove, said Sunday that he will step down next year as spokesman of his radical union and anti-globalization movement, the Farmers' Confederation. Bove, who gained fame as an anti-globalization activist in 1999 by ransacking a McDonald's restaurant under construction in southern France, said he would leave the job in April. Speaking during a massive protest against the World Trade Organization, Bove suggested he didn't want to continue to dominate the group. ``It would be very dangerous to personalize the movement,'' he said. The Farmers' Confederation promotes traditional agriculture and opposes genetically modified produce and fast food.
■ Outer space
Couple marries via satellite
A cosmonaut circling 380km above the earth on the International Space Station married his fiance in Texas on Sunday in the first space wedding. Peering into each other's eyes via a satellite video hookup at NASA's Johnson Space Center, the two exchanged vows before 200 people in a ceremony that ended with bride Ekaterina Dmitriev blowing new Ukrainian husband Yuri Malenchenko a long distance kiss.
■ United States
Dancer Hines dies of cancer
Actor and dancer Gregory Hines, 57, who tap-danced his way to fame in movies such as The Cotton Club and White Nights, died of cancer on Saturday, his publicist said Sunday. Hines, who won a Tony award for best actor in the musical Jelly's Last Jam, was born in New York and learned to tap-dance at the age of three. Hines and his brother Maurice performed together in the musical revue Eubie! in 1978 and in Broadway's Sophisticated Ladies. On television, he had his own series in 1997 called The Gregory Hines Show. Gregory Oliver Hines was born on Feb. 14, 1946, in New York City.
PHISHING: The con might appear convincing, as the scam e-mails can coincide with genuine messages from Apple saying you have run out of storage For a while you have been getting messages from Apple saying “your iCloud storage is full.” They say you have exceeded your storage plan, so documents are no longer being backed up, and photos you take are not being uploaded. You have been resisting Apple’s efforts to get you to pay a minimum of ￡0.99 (US$1.33) a month for more storage, but it seems that you cannot keep putting off the inevitable: You have received an e-mail which says your iCloud account has been blocked, and your photos and videos would be deleted very soon. To keep them you need
For two decades, researchers observed members of the Ngogo chimpanzee group of Kibale National Park in Uganda spend their days eating fruits and leaves, resting, traveling and grooming in their tropical rainforest abode, but this stable community then fractured and descended into years of deadly violence. The researchers are now describing the first clearly documented example of a group of wild chimpanzees splitting into two separate factions, with one launching a series of coordinated attacks against the other. Adult males and infants were targeted, with 28 deaths. “Biting, pounding the victim with their hands, dragging them, kicking them — mostly adult males,
The Israeli military has demolished entire villages as part of its invasion of south Lebanon, rigging homes with explosives and razing them to the ground in massive remote detonations. The Guardian reviewed three videos posted by the Israeli military and on social media, which showed Israel carrying out mass detonations in the villages of Taybeh, Naqoura and Deir Seryan along the Israel-Lebanon border. Lebanese media has reported more mass detonations in other border villages, but satellite imagery was not readily available to verify these claims. The demolitions came after Israeli Minister of Defense Israel Katz called for the destruction of
SUPERFAN: The Japanese PM played keyboard in a Deep Purple tribute band in middle school and then switched to drums at university, she told the British rock band Legendary British rock band Deep Purple yesterday made Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s day with a brief visit to their high-profile superfan as they returned to the nation they first toured more than half a century ago. Takaichi’s reputation as an amateur drummer, and a fan of hard rock and heavy metal has been well documented, and she has referred to Deep Purple as one of her favorite bands along with the likes of Black Sabbath and Iron Maiden. “You are my god,” a giddy Takaichi said in English to Deep Purple drummer Ian Paice, presenting him with a set of made-in-Japan
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